First of all, I would like to introduce myself. I’m a semi-professional poker player from Cairo, Egypt. I’ve got a normal job in an advertising agency here in Cairo, and make extra money playing online, and try my best to make money grinding online but I’m still learning.

A few years ago, in 2006 to be exact, I was at work in a town called Forte De Marmi in Italy. While I was there outside at the front entrance smoking a cigarette, I saw an 18-year-old blonde American kid talking on his phone. First couple of words I heard him saw was “Well, maybe he was raising with AQ for value there.” I thought to myself “Wow, this is great, somebody at the hotel who seems to be a poker enthusiast!”

I got to know the guy, and he turned out to be a full time poker professional who plays mainly on Cake Poker and Full Tilt. He actually showed me some heads up moves online, which mesmerized me, and he was one of the first people to tell me about how big Tom Dwan was going to be. At the time, Dwan’s only recognized appearance on television was his NBC heads up match up with Hellmuth.

A week passed and he went back to the United States getting ready for college, and I went back to Egypt, continuing my job. We added each other on facebook and have been in contact since.

A few months ago, I checked his stats on pokertableratings.com. I was very happy and proud to see that he made a big name for himself in the online poker world playing big stakes on Full Tilt. He was actually ‘on fire’ according to the site and up $580,000. I also saw this guy win big hands against players such as David Benyamine and LuvtheWNBA. Since then, he went back down playing $25-50. Guess he was proving to himself that he could handle the big boys and it paid off nicely.

Now lets get to the problem that happened on the 9th of August 2010. I haven’t spoken to him in a few weeks, and needed a favor. I wanted to play a few FTOPS events on Full Tilt Poker; however, there are credit cards in Egypt that won’t work on the site but for some reason work on Pokerstars. I had quite a bit of money on Stars and wanted a reliable source that could transfer me money on Full Tilt in exchange for money on Pokerstars.

So I went to message him on facebook and noticed that I’ve been deleted from his friends list. Then I logged onto my AIM Messenger account and found him online. I said, “Hey man, how are you? I need a huge favor!” He was apparently away from his computer but came back in the rudest of ways 2 hours later and simply said, “What the hell do you want?”

Right off the bat, I kind of felt something was wrong (because he was the nicest kid in the world), but I thought something might have happened for him to delete me off of facebook and talk to me that way. So I asked him what was wrong and he told me to “I’m visiting my fathers grave so just get to the point” (my friends father recently passed away)
Then I asked him for the favor. He said “Well I’m not home but I can do it for you….but I need a favor from you first.”

“I need you to send $275 dollars to this guy called ‘Rosendito Aquino’ in the Philippines for me as they don’t accept Avex cards on Moneygram or Western Union online.”

I thought it was kind of odd at first but I decided to agree and try to send money through Western Union, which was situated under my office building. I went down and luckily found them closed. I came up again and told him. He got pissed. Very pissed.

“Dude, I need this right now, don’t you understand? It’s a birthday present for my mother, and I can’t wait overnight for it.” “If you don’t want to help me just tell me, I’ll find someone else to do it.

If you do it today, I’ll send you the $500 dollars without you even sending me anything from Stars”

He was so adamant about it, and kept on giving me links to Western Unions in Egypt. I told him that they were all closed as I use it a lot for work, and personal reasons. In the end our conversation was fine and he said he’d send me the money either way later.

After that he told me he had to go do something.

I went home and a couple of hours later, the drama begins:

I found him online on AIM and told him that I was ready to make the transfer. He said ok but asked me to send him the $500 dollars onto one of his good friends accounts instead. At the time, I had both my Pokerstars and Full Tilt accounts open.

He gave me the name of his friend: P0kerm0n.

I asked him why should I send it to this guy again? And he said just do it and he’ll send you the money on Full Tilt. And told me not to worry because he’s a Full Tilt Poker pro and asked me to check him out online.

So I sent the money to the guy on Pokerstars, and as soon as I got the email confirming the transfer, I suddenly find my Full Tilt Poker account BLOCKED!

Then he sends me this on AIM:

“Oh my God! It’s not him, somebody is using his accounts! I’m so sorry for this, I’ll give him a phone call now! This guy is a douche, he ****ing owes me $22,000 from the WSOP! He borrwed $10k for the H.O.R.S.E event, $10k for the Main Event and $2k for a Hold ‘Em event. He’s a thief!!!!”

After that, he didn’t reply.

I go online and search for this ‘P0kerm0n’ guy from Kirkland and find out that he really is a professional poker player and a Full Tilt Poker pro called Richard Brodie. I also read that he was a computer wiz and was the 77th employee at Microsoft. I also read that he was banned from Harrah’s for cheating!

I check my Full Tilt email and not surprisingly, I get an email from a guy who works in security with the name of Richard!

Something is very wrong here.

I instantly email Pokerstars and tell them that it’s an emergency and that I need somebody to reverse the transfer for me. I explained that the guy was a thief and I’ve been had.

Surprisingly, Pokerstars instantly gave me a call on my cell phone and asked me the full story. Before I even started the Pokerstars employee said “By the way you should know that many poker players have had their AIM accounts hacked, did you contact your friend on that site by any chance?”

That’s when I was positive that a hacker has tricked me on my friends account. Something I should have noticed from the first ever messaged he sent me. The Pokerstars guy was very helpful through all of this havoc and told me he’ll do his best to get my money back even though any money transfers is out of their jurisdiction and is completely the fault of the players making the transfers. He was right.

I got a call an hour later from Pokerstars from the same employee. He told me that he called ‘Richard Brodie’ and that he was ‘very helpful’ and would send me the money back. I told him that Richard was the con artist, and the Pokerstars employee told me that he highly doubts it and again mentioned that he was ‘very helpful and sorry for all of the inconvenience’

I asked the Pokerstars guy to explain to me why on earth would the hacker ask me to send the money to Richard Brodie if he wasn’t involved? He simply said that he doesn’t know but Richard told him that somebody has been doing that with many accounts and sending money to random people, not only Brodie.

I got my money back thanks to Pokerstars.

But in the end, all the pieces have been added together. I might be wrong and I hate judging someone without full evidence, but it seems to me that computer geek Richard Brodie is the man who hacked my friend’s account. It seems that Richard Brodie is the man who sent me the email from Full Tilt Poker (I highly doubt it was a coincidence). It seems that Richard Brodie used his ‘charm’ on the Pokerstars employee, convincing him otherwise. It seems that Richard Brodie is a thief.

I’m sorry for this long message. This is actually my first ever post on any poker site. But I needed to share this sad story with the poker world. I really hope Richard Brodie reads this and I hope he pleads innocence on the matter. I honestly hope it wasn’t him as I wouldn’t be able to trust any poker site anymore. Multi-accounts are a minimal crime compared to something like this, and if he’s found guilty, I hope somebody on Full Tilt Poker deals with this situation.

If you have any questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to post.

Thank you

Just curious, you don't consider it's possible that it was Brodie's AIM that was hacked?

Do you really think he's going around rolling people?

What do you mean?

I never had Brodie on AIM. I was talking to my friends account this whole time.

Plus, why the hell would somebody ask me to send money on Brodie's account?

I really really doubt Richard is behind it bro

Nothing surprises me in poker but this one would. Richard Brodie as a thief is LOL. If Richard Brodie (Quiet Lion) is stealing ($500?!?) from people it's time to for us all to pack it in.

LOL@YOU...try using your brain before shipping da moniez next time. Oh something must be wrong. I'll do it anyway!

well this thread is a disaster.

op, im like 99.999999% positive brodie doesnt want/need your 500$.

That's the thing.

I honestly don't believe its him deep down in my gut.

But how the hell does this make sense? Why would the money go to Brodie? Is the hacker just a Brodie stalker and wants to give him all the money he can get his hands on?

If someone could give me an explanation of what happened I would be glad to hear it.

So why think it's Brodie behind it ?

Why would he hack the account and have you wire him 500 bucks, and then give the money back? That does not make any sense.

Richard Brodie, as one of the first Microsoft employees, is set for life, I highly doubt he's scamming you for $500.

BTW, he was also unbanned from Harrahs almost immediately after he was mistakenly banned.

I check my Full Tilt email and not surprisingly, I get an email from a guy who works in security with the name of Richard!



This seems like a key part you have not given enough information about.

Weird story either way.

http://www.spicejar.org/asiplease/archives/000595.html

link to Richard Brodie being barred from Harrah's. According to this story at least, he didn't cheat, he just won too much at slots.

How is it that you out Richard Brodie but don't out your friend? You realize that its almost 99% possible that your "friend" is the one who got hacked, or decided to **** with you since you're harassing him about doing online transfers when his dad has recently passed away.

richard brodie is worth 100's of millions

he is a poor loser in chat that is all

Who the **** cares. There will always be hackers and scammers, just don't be such an easy mark next time.

His father passed away a year ago. And we talked after it so many times. Plus this was the first ever favour I ask him. He just added me on facebook on his new account and his status is:

"This is my new account, don't talk to the old one because it has been hacked".

Very simple.

That's all that happened. The guy at security called Richard asked me for my verification papers.

What I don't understand is why was my account blocked exactly the same time the guy received the money on Pokerstars? It doesn't make sense.

None of this does.

Not to derail thread as it's above my head and i wish you all the best.

But I'm suprised poker sites are allowed in muslim nations. I know Egypt is secular, is it unique for the arab world or are they allowed everywhere?

again sry for the derailment

Level?

So why are you flipping out exactly? Richard Brodie sent you back the money even though you didn't bother to check to see if the person you're talking to is your friend. If Richard Brodie was trying to steal your money why would he return it? If he wanted to he could just flat out refuse and PokerStars could do nothing about it since you legitimately transferred your money over.

It's okay.

Poker is fine here in Egypt. There are tens of Casinos in Egypt. A lot with $5-10 cash games and daily $100 rebuy NLHE tournaments.

Banks allow you to use your credit cards on poker sites except on Full Tilt Poker. Which is weird.

Poker isn't allowed in certain Islamic states like Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Libya and Saudi Arabia (friend of mine travelled there for work and took his poker set with him, they jailed him for a week).

Grand Sinai Casino in Egypt is run by idiots. dealers, directors etc, and flagrant breaking of the rules/

Because he didn't want to look like he was accused of anything or look like a theif.

Again, like I said, it might not have been him, but all what has happened led me to believe it was him.

I'm not doing this to f**k up with Richard Brodie's life. I had no idea who he was before this happened, I don't care about him and I don't like unjustly accusing people. But all the evidence in this particular case has gone against him.

From what all you guys are saying, I'm starting to understand that he might be a good guy, and is innocent. But how could you blame me for suspecting after all whats happened?

But players there are easy.

Poker is still new in Egypt so that's probably why. I've only been there twice though because I live in Cairo. Casino's in Cairo are good though